The present invention relates to a shredder for shredding documents or the like.
Documents or the like bearing confidential matters are, after their utilization, shredded so as to make the contents of the documents or the like illegible so that disclosure of the contents of the documents or the like is prevented.
Conventionally, in order to shred documents or the like, apparatuses have been employed in which the documents or the like bearing confidential matters are fed in between upper and lower rotating cutters from a document loading aperture so as to be shredded into pieces by the upper and lower rotating cutters. If another person, other than the operator wishes, while the operator is continuously shredding a large quantity of first documents, to urgently shred second documents urgently, one of the following three methods (1) to (3) would be adopted. Namely, in the method (1), the operator suspends shredding of the first documents and then, shreds the urgent second documents. In the method (2), the other person shreds the second documents by himself immediately after completion of the shredding of the first documents. On the other hand, in the method (3), the other person requests the operator to shred the second documents immediately after completion of the shredding of the first documents.
However, in the case where the method (1) in which the operator shreds the second documents by suspending the shredding of the first documents or the method (2) in which the other person shreds the second documents by himself after the operator has shredded the first documents undesirable, waste of time occurs. Meanwhile, in the case for the method (3) in which the other person requests the operator to shred the urgent second documents after shredding of the first documents, there is a possibility of an undesirable disclosure i.e. a leak of the confidential contents of the second documents.
Furthermore, installation of a plurality of the apparatuses for shredding the confidential documents leads to waste of cost and space.